


Achilles and Patroklos

by toujours_nigel



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Renault
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Somewhere, perhaps up in the mountains riding alone, they had broken the wall, cast themselves into each other's arms, were once again Achilles and Patroklos..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Achilles and Patroklos

“Arabia,” Alexander says, in the mountains around Ekbatana, and turns to smile at him. “As soon as this summer is past.” This summer that has seen broken the one surety in his life. Seen it repaired, too, though the cracks still show. Alexander is careful of him, now.

 

“Would that you had told me of it, earlier,” he says, face averted, “I could have caught up to the veterans, and taken them home, and your most loyal follower could have stayed. Though,” he muses, “I suppose you might not have trusted me, with them. Still, I could have gone, had I renounced my rank. Kraterus would not have minded overmuch.”

 

“You would have left me?” This horse is red, with a white mane and tail—all the signs of the boy he had first met are long-gone, if long-mourned, then replaced. He alone lingers still, and Ptolemy.

 

“I will not go to war with you again, my lord King.” My Alexander, my love. “I tire of war and of exile.”

 

“You tire of me,” Alexander bites out.

 

“I yearn for my home,” he answers, “in the mountains beyond your palace, my lord King.”

 

“Are you alone, in that?” He looks at Alexander, now, grave and collected—he is Chilliarch, and that is rank above all who are not this man in front of him, in this kingdom without an heir—and refrains from saying that Alexander, at least, does not feel the same.

 

“My mother writes that she longs to see me,” he says, instead, and that is as good as saying it outright. Alexander will never see Olympias, again. He does not know, even know, ten years and more gone, what words they shared, that last day in Pella, but Alexander will never see his mother, again. “And I tire of war, and all the veterans have been released, my lord King, so why not me, too?”

 

Alexander looks up at him, jaw clenched. “None of my generals have leave to go.”

 

He nods thoughtfully. “And I must be treated no differently than the others. Of course. But, my lord King, may I ask, then, for a satrapy?”

 

“I offered you Sidon, once.” And I would not leave you, then.

 

“Indeed, my lord King. And perhaps I should have accepted that gift. Yet I was young, then, and foolish.” And in love with you, Alexander, as I still am, and could you truly have let me go, then?

 

“It was not as a gift that I offered it.” Alexander rides forward, blocking his horse. “And I do not at all offer it, now.”

 

He nods. “And yet, my lord King, I wish to go.” Alexander looks at him, and he refuses to look up, though he can feel the eyes on him—more than half-a-lifetime, of giving Alexander what he needs, and the look in those eyes would break him, now. “My mother,” he says instead, “says that she would see my wife. And my wife,” Drypetis, beautiful Drypetis, who he has won, though she hated him, and who is wholly his, “would see and say and do so very many things that I hardly know what to offer her first.”

 

“I gave her to you.”

 

“Indeed, my lord King, and for that I am grateful.” He is called arrogant, and cold, and aloof. True, one and all, yet he has never been so to Alexander, ere this. “And would you not have me give you nieces and nephews?”

 

“We shall go to Babylon, soon,” Alexander says, face blank and tone guarded, “and you may summon her, there.”

 

“No, my lord King, that I shall not do.”

 

“You yourself said you wished to see her.”

 

“No, my lord King,” he smiles—cold smile, Amyntor’s smile, Amyntoros’ smile. “I said that my mother would see my wife. I wish to take her to Macedon.”

 

“You have not my leave to go,” Alexander snarls.

 

And he, who has never been afraid of Alexander, since the day he was a small, golden, tousled boy, leans forward, coldly determined. “And yet I shall go, my lord King, and my wife with me.”

 

“I shall count it treason.”

 

“Then you shall have my corpse, stoned on your orders,” he says, gathering the reins of his horse, “and my blood on your hands, my lord King. For I shall go home, whether you will or not.”

 

“Why?”

 

“My lord King?”

 

“Why would you go home?” Alexander asks, and this… this is not the Great King, nor the Macedonian General, this is his boy, who he comforted when Olympias scarred him, who confided in only him, and he thinks he might well break. “Why do you feel yourself in exile, here beside me? Why do you call me your lord King?”

 

 “I grow weary of wars and intrigue,” he says, “and of Persia. I grow weary of always seeing others in what was once my place. And I call you my lord King because you are that.”

 

“All call me Alexander.” He longs, now, to dismount his horse and pull Alexander from his and into his arms.

 

“And I am but one of them,” he says. “Truly spoken, my lord King, yet I shall not call you that.”

 

“Do you truly think that?”

 

He looks up, at Alexander, then down, at his hand stroking his horse’s neck. “No, my lord King. For I serve the same King, and face the same punishments, and share the same responsibilities as those of my rank, yet none of them shares my rank, and none of them has to hear, forever, speculations about whether he won his rank in battlefield or bed.”

 

And now he looks up, to meet Alexander’s eyes. “And what think you?”

 

“Truly, my lord King,” he smiles, “I think I won my rank in battle, for I have long been superseded in bed.”

 

“You will not go home,” Alexander says. “You will not leave me.”

 

“I grow weary,” he says, “and others would serve you as well, my lord King.”

 

“And who would serve Alexander?”

 

He is truly weary of intrigue and some of the bluntness that earned him warnings from Ptolemy, in Mieza, half-a-lifetime ago, pushes to the fore. “Bagoas does well enough.”

 

Alexander flinches, and the anger that had seeped into his eyes drowns in a flood of sorrow. “Hephaistion.”

 

“Bagoas serves Alexander. The army serves the general. The courtiers serve the Great King. What need do you require me to serve?”

 

“To be my Patroklos,” Alexander answers, and they are both near tears now. Had it been like this, with Olympias, love devouring the beloved, until nothing remained of the love but an insatiable hunger still holding them together? No resolution to any battle, only tear-soaked truces that erupted again into war? He had prided himself, once, on being unlike her, for demanding nothing and offering all he had. But he had been young, then, and secure in place and position.

 

“I am no Patroklos,” he says. “Patroklos was never set aside, for beautiful boys, nor disregarded in favour of other Myrmidons. I am no Patroklos.”

 

“Stay,” Alexander says. “Stay, and do not leave me. I would go mad, without you. Stay, Hephaistion.”

 

“I grow weary,” he tries, again, already-defeated, but loth to surrender. “I would go home.”

 

Alexander dismounts, and holds a hand out to him, and he dismounts and takes it. “You have not my leave to go,” he says, mouth close enough to kiss, and he is suddenly thirteen and dizzy with proximity. “You will not go, Hephaistion, for I have need of you.”

 

“I will not go to war with you again,” he insists.

 

“Then you shall be regent, and rule Persia in my stead, and Babylon, and Medea, and Bactria, and Sogdania, and I shall conquer Arabia, when it is spring. And then, you will go home,” he promises, sure and splendid as a god, as Ares, “and take your wife and your child. And I shall go with you.”

 

“My lord King…” Another year. Perhaps longer. And while he wishes to protest, to insist that he wants nothing more than to take himself and his wife home, to his land and his family, he has begun, planning, already, the logistics of supplying the army, and of keeping the baggage train safe, and what satraps and what nobles he will consult with to discover more about Arabia’s terrain and tribes.

 

“Alexander. Call me my name.”

 

“You are my King,” he answers, the resistance unconscious and unnecessary.

 

“I am yours,” Alexander insists—still a god, but Eros now, and not Ares—and unfolds his fist, palm up, the leaf still as bright as the day he had plucked it from Victory’s wreath and he had held his life in his hands.

 

“And I am yours,” he answers, taking it from his hand, and placing his hand in its place. He pulls grass from the golden curls before they ride back to Ekbatana, Great King and Chilliarch, but again just Hephaistion and Alexander.


End file.
